Tigerboy and his toys.

Tigerboy is just over a year old, and he’s getting into playing with things. By that I mean playing with things roughly as they’re designed to be played with 😉

Over the last few days I’ve enjoyed watching him exploring. He likes hitting things, so the Plan Toys Melody Xylophone we were sent to review is very enjoyable.

Unlike many toy musical instruments, this one actually makes quite a pleasant sound. It even comes with tune sheets, although we did find a mistake in one of them. (No, please don’t ask me which one, I don’t remember!) This means that it’s a toy that will stretch with age. Tigerboy can bang on it and it doesn’t hurt my head, Smallest can get a bit more musical and rhythmic, and Big can make it make tunes. That’s when we can find the striker of course. It does have a holder underneath for it to be kept in, but if you pick it up the wrong way it falls out. Funnily enough that happens regularly here.

He also likes posting things. The Wonderworld shape sorter from DKL has been languishing rather since it arrived as it was just too complicated at that point. Now however it’s coming into its own.

Again this is a toy that stretches. The sides remove and have picture boards so that you can match up the pictures and there are four different shapes to post. Two go in the top and then there’s one at each end. At the moment the cylinder is the only one he can consistently get in, and I make recovery easier by taking out two of the side pieces and keeping them in the box. Smallest likes to try to build the side pictures, which are quite fiddly to put in accurately. That means that for a shape sorter this has got an age range of at least two years, pretty impressive I think.

And the final thing he likes? Balls. Things that roll. He was given a Helter Skelter at Christmas and he adores it. I think it was the first toy I saw him playing with independently. He sits for ages dropping the balls in the top and waiting for them to appear at the bottom before repeating the cycle.

Given that it has balls, you can imagine they have a habit of disappearing under furniture and so on. Fortunately we’ve discovered quite a few of the cat toys fit into the hole, so we have a much larger supply than the three that came with the set originally. Just as well, really.

So what toys do your one year olds like to play with?

Disclosure: the xylophone and shape sorter were sent for review. Amazon links are affiliate links.